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As LMU continues to grow, there is no shortage of special events and this weekend it was the Physician Assistant Program’s time to shine as it celebrated its Class of 2013 at the Lincoln Memorial University-DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine Physician Assistant Program White Coat Ceremony.

The White Coat Ceremony has been a standard ritual in the medical education world since Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons celebrated the first one in 1993. The White Coat Ceremony is an important, public demonstration of a student’s commitment to patient care and professionalism. LMU’s first White Coat ceremony was celebrated in 2007 when the inaugural class of osteopathic medical students were “robed” with his or her short white laboratory coat. The PA program, which was founded in 2009, followed suit in 2010.

While osteopathic medical students are coated in their first months of study at LMU-DCOM, the PA program celebrates its White Coat Ceremony shortly before the completion of the students’ first year of study just prior to clinical rotations. The ceremony itself is an opportunity for physician assistant students to hear words of wisdom and encouragement and provides time for reflection on what it means to become a physician assistant.

Students are coated with short white lab coats to help distinguish students from physicians and physician assistants, who wear full length white coats. The 75 PA students who were coated on Saturday will be packing up their white coats and departing Harrogate for a wide array of clinical destinations around the country in the coming weeks. Their rotations will get underway at hospitals, clinics and private practices at the end of this month or the first week in August.

Beyond celebrating the Class of 2013, this is a special time for the LMU-DCOM PA Program because for the next weeks it has three full classes of students enrolled. LMU-DCOM welcomed the PA Class of 2014 in June and the Class of 2012 is wrapping rotation on the way to its August 4,2012, Commencement Ceremony.

Newly coated members of the LMU-DCOM PA Class of 2013 recite the Physician Assistant Oath following the coating ceremony.